Human rights expert William Schabas to speak at UGA School of Law

Athens, Ga. – William A. Schabas, an internationally respected expert on human rights law, genocide and the death penalty, will present a lecture on “Human Rights and Culture” at the University of Georgia School of Law Feb. 7 at 4:30 p.m. The event will take place in Classroom J (room 347) in Hirsch Hall and is free and open to the public.

Schabas’ lecture, which is co-sponsored by the school's Dean Rusk Center and the Willson Center for Humanities and the Arts, will address the long-neglected association between human rights, culture and the arts.

Schabas is a professor of international law at Middlesex University in London and is chairman of the Irish Centre for Human Rights. His career includes serving as one of three international members of the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2002 to 2004. He also worked as a consultant on capital punishment for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime and drafted the 2010 report of the U.N. secretary-general on the status of the death penalty.

A prolific scholar, Schabas is the author of more than 20 books dealing in whole or in part with international human rights law. He has published more than 300 articles in academic journals, principally in the field of international human rights law and international criminal law. He is also editor-in-chief of Criminal Law Forum, the quarterly journal of the International Society for the Reform of Criminal Law.